Tag: Crete

“So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth,and they stopped building the city.” Genesis 11:8

The idea that “modern” humans evolved in Africa and spread out from there is from evolution theory.

The fossilized human footprints found in Crete are older than the human-like prints found in Africa.

The ancient footprints discovered in Crete.

Newly discovered human-like footprints from Crete may put the established narrative of early human evolution to the test. The footprints are approximately 5.7 million years old and were made at a time when previous research puts our ancestors in Africa — with ape-like feet.

Ever since the discovery of fossils of Australopithecus in South and East Africa during the middle years of the 20th century, the origin of the human lineage has been thought to lie in Africa. More recent fossil discoveries in the same region, including the iconic 3.7 million year old Laetoli footprints from Tanzania which show human-like feet and upright locomotion, have cemented the idea that hominins (early members of the human lineage) not only originated in Africa but remained isolated there for several million years before dispersing to Europe and Asia. The discovery of approximately 5.7 million year old human-like footprints from Crete, published online this week by an international team of researchers, overthrows this simple picture and suggests a more complex reality.

Human feet have a very distinctive shape, different from all other land animals. The combination of a long sole, five short forward-pointing toes without claws, and a hallux (“big toe”) that is larger than the other toes, is unique. The feet of our closest relatives, the great apes, look more like a human hand with a thumb-like hallux that sticks out to the side. Archaeology newsnetwork

The Crete footprints dispel a theory defining a different species as an ancestor of hominins.

The footprints discovered in Crete are not the oldest proof of humans, but they are the oldest sign of humans discovered outside of Africa. Though theories of when humans migrated from Africa vary, the new discovery predates all these theories by several million years.

The discovery in Crete also dispelled a theory defining a different species as an ancestor of hominins. Ardipithecus Ramidus had ape-like feet, but evolutionists believe its descendants eventually learned to walk upright, leading to the development of bipedal humans. Scientists believed Ardipithecus Ramidus was the ancestor of later hominins. Since the newly discovered footprints predate Ardipithecus Ramidus by at least one million years, they seem to indicate an entirely different line of development for the human species, in which Ardipithecus Ramidus is not an ancestor. BreakingNewsIsrael

‘This discovery challenges the established narrative of early human evolution head-on and is likely to generate a lot of debate. Whether the human origins research community will accept fossil footprints as conclusive evidence of the presence of hominins in the Miocene of Crete remains to be seen,’ says Per Ahlberg. archaeology newsnetwork